


He Who Cannot Put His Thoughts On Ice

by ShevatheGun



Series: The Mistress: The Rise and Regrets of Tora Naprem [6]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Arguing, Demisexual Character, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Flirting, Holodecks/Holosuites, I'm tagging the bajoran ocs by name now, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Naprem being aggressively asexual, Occupation of Bajor, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Sex Work, Slow Burn, That's right, just try and stop me, oh my dear darling demi, sexy holograms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShevatheGun/pseuds/ShevatheGun
Summary: When the environmental controls start malfunctioning, the heat sets something boiling between Naprem and Dukat that they both find increasingly difficult to ignore.





	He Who Cannot Put His Thoughts On Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year, buckaroos! My goal is to get through most of the heavy-lifting on this _~*~*medium rare filet mignon slow-roasted slow burn of slow burns*~*~_ within the next year, so consider this my first notch in the post. Thank you so much to cohobbitation for betaing, bolstering, and listening to my babbling, and thank you all for reading. Now, without further ado... *wiggles hand in a ficly direction*
> 
> [EDIT 2/14/18] I thought this fic might be a good place for my "summer pinup" Naprem. ;p

****

_Naprem Beach Pinup by[shevathegun](http://shevathegun.tumblr.com/tagged/tora%20naprem)_

* * *

**Terok Nor - First Summer, 2352 - 33rd Year of the Occupation**

* * *

The sirens sound before dawn - or the Cardassian equivalent, anyway. Naprem could swear the station gets _darker_ as the day drags on, but that could be her imagination. It’s so dim that it’d be hard to tell, anyway.

Naprem rises with the rest. She bares her wrist to be scanned and proceeds with the women of Section 35 to the sonic showers and then to breakfast: boiled root vegetables, chilled and served with yamok sauce. She has yet to meet a single Bajoran who likes yamok sauce. She dabs her vegetables as clean as she can on the sides of her tray but the bitter-sour taste lingers and makes her gums burn. As always, there’s more water than there is meal. Her neighbor nearly dozes off and Naprem nudges her gently to keep her awake as the guards rove around, looking for an excuse to prod or jeer.

She’s putting her tray away when a woman tugs at her arm and begins to quietly complain about overcrowding in Section 41. “I just thought you’d be the one to mention it to,” she murmurs. She has an unnerving, nervous air to her. She shifts from one foot to the next, as though she’s waiting to be reassured or dismissed.

Another siren sounds and the workers rise like a tide to head to clock in - from there, Naprem parts ways from the group being herded into the mines and instead makes for Operations. She’s stopped again along the way: once by a small elderly mine worker, who complains of a toothache that began days ago and that now bears the heat of infection; the second time by a broad-shouldered girl in her late teens who complains that Section 17 is lacking in hygienic supplies.

Naprem carries her confusion up the lift and into Operations with her. During rounds, she’s stopped by few more people, and again during midday meal, and on her way to Records. Every person who stops her bears the same strange, nervous, hopeful look. It needles her the whole day through. It presses like thumbs to her throat.

That night in Quark’s, she leans into B’hava’el’s arm, guilt drumming its fingers in her chest.

“I don’t know what they expect me to do,” she says.

“They probably want you to help them,” B’hava’el says, peering out over the bar for her next client. “You’ve got the ear of the Prefect, don’t you?”

“ _Help_ them?” Naprem repeats. “I can’t help anyone.”

B’hava’el looks back at her, brow creased. She shrugs a little.

“You already have. Y’know?”

* * *

 

That’s getting ahead of herself. Naprem isn’t sure she’d count the missing women as “helped.” But they’re home safe, and that, she supposes, is an unprecedented feat.

In the aftermath of Darhe’el’s aborted coup attempt, the atmosphere on the station is oddly light. The streaks of blood on the floor outside of Operations vanish overnight. Arrests are made quickly; quietly. Once the traitors are carted off, it feels as though the air has cleared. Officers are eager to make their loyalties known, and Dukat is eager to know them. In absence of a holiday, the promenade is the site of a Cardassian celebration - there’s laughter and raucous partying and drinks all around. Naprem finds herself dragged from unannounced event to unannounced event, carefully declining drinks when they’re offered, always sitting in Dukat’s shadow as he’s showered with praise. For about a week, B’hava’el’s profits triple.

Naprem doesn’t disdain him his victory. One of them ought to be pleased, after all. She knows he would rather she join in the celebrations, she can tell by the way he holds himself. But in Darhe’el’s wake, the nightmares roll in like a stormfront. At night the halls of Terok Nor echo with Cardassian laughter, and when Naprem retires, exhausted, she hears the same laughter from the mouths of her demons.

She simply can’t find cause to celebrate. Once the trial is over, Darhe’el will return to his post at Gallitep - perhaps under her shadow, but no doubt just as energetic in his butchery. From the unceasing flow of fatality reports from Gallitep, it’s clear his officers are just as efficient at killing in his absence as not. She’s embarrassed him, that’s all. And while that may have satisfied her for a day or two - and satisfied B’hava’el for many days longer than that - it won’t have any lasting effect. Darhe’el will go on killing. Her people will go on suffering - here, there, and everywhere, as far as she can tell. Every night she’s dragged to another celebration, it feels as though her hope’s being kicked by a daki. Every time another stranger appears at her arm, eyes wide with an impossible dream, she feels herself grow smaller.

“You’re the Prefect’s aide,” one woman says with barely-restrained awe. “Surely, you can help.”

Naprem bites down on what she fears is the truth: she’s not sure she can. Helping just a few in the worst circumstances imaginable seems to have taken all that she had. She’s not sure what’s left in the aftermath, save her endless whirling nightmares.

* * *

 

Two weeks after the attempted coup, Naprem wakes up hot.

She thinks little of it, there in the dark. She wakes a few minutes before the morning siren, sweat sticking at the back of her neck, neck stiff, arms and legs sore. She must have been tossing in her sleep again. The back end of a nightmare tastes sour in her mouth, curdles in her stomach. She dreamed she was in a bed of snakes, being strangled by a gigantic cobra - she can still feel its coils thick around her waist and her wrists, tight around her throat.

Her mouth is dry. When she gets up, she’s a little woozy. The sonic showers do nothing for it - all they do is rattle her teeth, and leave her hot skin buzzing for minutes afterwards. Breakfast is cold candied plum and a bitter bean spread with rice that’s too dry for the grains to stick together. She ignores it all in favor of her water - it feels as though she’s never been so thirsty in her life.

It’s only once she’s at breakfast, slightly refreshed from a cool drink, that she notices the rest of the workers in the morning shift doing the same. The old ladies are fanning their faces - the young men are catching water in their hands to spread on their necks. It’s _hot._ The soft scent of sweat permeates the mess hall, not pungent, but notable. The children are fussy, cranky and out of sorts. Naprem presses a hand to her forehead, wondering if she has a fever.

The heat follows her from the mess to the promenade, and from there to Operations. By the time she steps off the lift, Naprem feels a soft heat in her cheeks and the back of her neck.

“Good morning, Professor,” Dukat says as she steps through the door.

“Good morning,” she says. She’s a little surprised he seems so put-together this morning. When she retired last night, he’d been slovenly drunk, halfway through a spirited rendition of the history of Cardassian oratory. “Are the environmental controls broken?”

“Hm?” Dukat looks up from his terminal, and yes, he’s strangely put-together, his posture composed, his face slightly energized.

“It’s a bit warm,” Naprem informs him. “I couldn’t help but notice.”

“Ah, yes,” Dukat says, as though the same thought had only just occurred to him. He silences something playing on his terminal and turns fully in his chair to regard her. “The controls seem to have been sabotaged during the attack on Operations - nothing major. Only a few degrees above the standard.” He takes a deep breath, smiling around the room. “I find it very invigorating.”

Naprem frowns, brow creased.

“Is it going to be fixed?”

“In time, I suppose.” Dukat waves his hand dismissively. “It’s not a priority.”

“Not a priority?” Naprem repeats. “It’s a sauna in here.”

Dukat frowns. “I think you’ll find that’s an exaggeration.”

“We keep the station very warm as it is,” Naprem says.

Dukat smiles in that slow, lopsided way of his, as though she’s said something very charming. “‘We,’ Professor?”

Naprem’s cheeks flush. “I just mean-- I--” She purses her lips, lowers her eyes. “I only mean that it’s likely to have an adverse effect if it goes on much longer. Bajorans can’t conduct themselves optimally in temperatures such as these, and--”

“You speak much more formally when you’re nervous, Professor,” Dukat says, folding his hands in his lap.

“I’m not nervous,” she says.

Dukat cocks an orbital ridge. His smirk is disbelieving. “I’d urge you not to be.”

“I’m not.”

Dukat smiles a little wider still. “I’m glad. I would hate to be responsible for your discomfort.”

“Then you could do something about the environmental controls,” Naprem snaps, color still high on her cheeks.

Dukat turns his palms up in a placating gesture. “As you wish.”

Naprem takes a breath, nervous energy still vibrating in her chest. “If it gets much warmer, it could pose a danger to those working in the mines--”

Dukat interrupts her. “Professor,” he says. “I’ve said I’ll make it a priority.”

Naprem inhales deeply through her nose, urging herself to have patience. “Fine,” she says, agreeing to say no more about it for the time being. Her eyes finally move to the image hovering in the open plane of Dukat’s terminal; Darhe’el occupies his holoscreen, silently miming a passionate speech.

“You’re watching the trial?” she asks, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.

Dukat hums thoughtfully and sits back in his chair. “There’s a lot you can learn from how a man lies, Professor - particularly when he does so to a live audience.”

“We’re a live audience, aren’t we?”

Dukat flicks his eyes back to her and smiles again. “I suppose.” He takes her in, hands folded in his lap, ankle hooked over one of his knobby knees, toe nodding along. “Still unsatisfied with your victory, I take it.”

“It’s not _my_ victory,” Naprem says. She sits down in the chair across from him without having to be asked. “And there’s nothing very satisfactory about it. This should be _his_ trial as well as theirs.”

“In a way it is,” Dukat says. “But I cede your point. That he escaped justice…” He clenches his fist, then flexes his fingers. “It doesn’t sit any better with me than it does with you.”

He takes a deep breath. “His time will come,” he says, as if to assure them both.

It’s strange, Naprem thinks - she used to be like that, too. She used to have that same faith, that those who committed acts of great evil would one day be punished. It’s strange to hear such a sentiment from Dukat, of all people.

He seems to sense her skepticism. He gives her a more direct look. “The fact remains that he can’t possibly get away with it again. No soldier from Gallitep will ever be transferred to this station - not while I remain Prefect.”

“I suppose that’ll have to be enough,” Naprem says.

“Professor!” He seems genuinely aghast. “That is a sizeable victory. It’s what started this whole mess in the first place.”

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to pick _one_ thing that started this whole mess in the first place,” Naprem says.

Dukat gives her a look somewhere between amusement and consternation. “The transfer of soldiers from Gallitep is as good as any.”

“They’ll still be at Gallitep, won’t they?” Naprem asks, as though they don’t both know the answer.

He peers at her, eyes narrowing just so, but he tips his head in acknowledgement. “I suppose they will.”

He finally gestures to the PADD in her lap. “Anything to report?” he asks.

She accepts the change of subject as the peace offering it is. She sighs. “Quark would like us to stop by during rounds today. _You_ ,” she corrects, as soon as she sees the threat of a smirk on his lips again. “Would like _you_ to stop by during rounds today.”

“Quark?” he asks. “Strange. He usually tries to avoid my attention whenever possible.”

“Probably a genetic affliction,” Naprem says. “I’ve heard the Ferengi are deathly allergic to bureaucracy, I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“Not at all. On the contrary, I take it much more personally when I’m forced to spend any time around him at all. The Bajorans don’t have a particularly sophisticated sense of smell, do they, Professor?”

Naprem narrows her eyes, annoyed at his tone. “No, sir.”

“Be grateful,” Dukat says. “It’s a dimension of the Ferengi experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

They’re interrupted by the door - Damar walks in, gives Naprem a cursory, disapproving look, and hands Dukat a PADD.

“Sir,” he says as way of greeting. “The production numbers from last week.”

“Very good,” Dukat says, and then they’ve changed the subject again. They spend the next ten minutes or so going over the production numbers, discussing worker allocation for the next week, and reviewing acquisitions requests from the overseers. When Lukin arrives they head off to rounds. The heat follows them, stalking along behind them like a great jungle cat, only putting off pouncing for the fun of it.

* * *

 

Security Chief Lukin has, for all intents and purposes, made a full recovery. Darhe’el’s phaser left him with an ugly burn that lances up his chest and along his neck, but it’s not life-threatening - according to Dr. Tebua, he should lose it in his next molt. He scratches at it constantly, and Naprem finds the sound incredibly grating as they walk along the promenade.

The promenade, of course, is hotter than Dukat’s office by several degrees. There’s no hour of the day when the corridors aren’t crowded with people - shopkeeps and soldiers and mine workers and comfort women - and the heat of them passes over Naprem in a wave the moment she steps off the lift. The soft scent of sweat is an aura, permeating the halls. As they walk from one end of the promenade to the other, Naprem feels heat bunching at her collar, sliding its unwelcome hands along her waist and under her arms. It pushes at the front of her head, making her increasingly cranky.

And that’s not mentioning the shopkeeps, all of whom are approximately three times pettier than normal. They always have comments prepared - work order requests, requisition lists, sales numbers. But this morning, it’s all complaints and bellyaching. The grocer complains that he received his shipment too early this morning, and that he needs extra workers for his next delivery to avoid further disruptions to his sleep schedule. The jeweler complains about the proximity of the clothier’s shop, which he claims has been stealing inspiration from his arrangements. The clothier complains about the garishness of the jeweler’s designs, which he claims is so extreme that it’s frightened away the majority of his customers. Each one seems more dramatic than the last, and it’s giving Naprem a headache.

It quickly becomes clear that she’s not the only one itching to get through the proceedings. Damar and Lukin give every shopkeep their undivided attention and seem to accept their complaints entirely without irony. But Dukat is coursing with the same eager energy that she sensed from him in his office. He keeps a good face in person, but as soon as they’ve moved on, Naprem sees a restless tick to his tail, a hitch to his upper lip. As they begin their walk to Quark’s, he finally gives in and begins to make smalltalk.

“Do you have family, Tora?”

“You’re not thinking of using _them_ to staff the grocery, are you?”

“What?”

“No, sir,” Naprem says, wishing she hadn’t been so blase about it. She’d dismissed it out of hand as a cruel joke and meant to respond in kind. Realizing it wasn’t one is crueler still.

Dukat turns his head, face creased and quizzical. “None?”

Naprem opens her mouth, but struggles to find the words. Only a Cardassian would think of this as appropriate smalltalk.

“No, sir,” she says again, and it hurts. There’s an echoing pang of loss beneath her ribs. No, she thinks. No family. Not anymore.

Dukat seems to take this information and turn it over in his mind. He seems to almost be waiting for her to elaborate, but she refuses. Finally, he folds his hands behind his back with a studious air.

“I apologize,” he says, not sounding particularly apologetic. “I assumed you were married.”

It’s Naprem’s turn to peer over at him. “What would make you assume that?”

He shrugs loosely. “It’s fairly common for Bajorans to have unrecorded marriages. You’re a woman possessed of charm and intelligence.” He pauses to glance over at her, eyes winding over her body. “Forgive me,” he says, like a man who’s never in his life asked for forgiveness and meant it. “You have what Cardassians might call ‘the beauty of a wife.’”

Naprem wrinkles her nose. “Meaning?”

Dukat shrugs again, and this time refuses to make eye contact, as though this will render him harmless. “Meaning that you exude an air of faithfulness and maternity. I assure you, it’s a high compliment - I assumed it was a universal expression.”

Isn’t that the problem with him? He assumes everything Cardassian is universal. Naprem gives him a look, fully prepared to dress him down, but there’s so much to say that she’s not sure where to start. For one thing, she most certainly does _not_ exude an air of faithfulness or maternity, and she’s not sure how anyone would without being a particularly matronly vedek. For another thing, she’s not sure how, precisely, this would be anything short of an insult but, of course, there’s Cardassia for you - even their highest compliments are insulting.

As for the assumption that she’s married - she doesn’t correct him. She can see him waiting for a definitive yes or no, and she’s not sure why, but the fact that he wants it makes her withhold it. _Keep wondering._

Damar and Lukin are looking on disapprovingly. Naprem tucks her tongue in her cheek and turns her face down again, as though there’s something worth looking at on her PADD. (There isn’t.) The heat butts its head against the small of her back and she sighs. Maybe it’s not him - maybe it’s just this damn heat that’s making her so cagey and suspicious. She pushes the tone of her voice back towards polite disinterest, for both their sakes.

“You said you had children, didn’t you?” she asks.

“I did,” Dukat beams, clearly delighted that she remembered. “Six children, in fact.” He flexes a little, fanning out his neck ridges like she might have forgotten about them.

“How old are they,” Naprem asks, because she spent enough time being impressed the first time he mentioned it.

“Kijor is my youngest,” he says. “Though he’s very close in age with Marism - they’re both still in secondary school. Sojak and Eonusa are the same age, depending on who you ask.”

“Depending on--”

“Each maintains they’re older than the other, though it hardly makes a difference. They both recently turned thirty. Sojak graduated from the Academy last year, top of his class. He’s been stationed planetside on Cardassia Prime.” He puffs up like a hen as he says this, bursting with pride.

“Eonusa is in medicine, like her mother - extraordinarily gifted for a woman her age. She has several little ones of her own. I imagine she’ll eclipse me in numbers soon enough.” He shrugs a little, as though the pride isn’t rising from him like steam, misting Naprem’s cheeks. “Rohava is seven years her senior - they’re close as can be.”

“Another doctor?” Naprem guesses.

“No, no - Rohava was the first of my children to pursue a military career. She made Dal just last month.” Dukat chuckles, shimmying his shoulders a little and gazing wistfully at the middle distance. “Soon, she’ll have her own command. Perhaps one day we’ll both be ‘Gul Dukat.’”

Naprem tries to muscle back her reaction to the idea of having to put up with more than one of him. “That leaves you eldest.” She’s been keeping count.

“Yes,” Dukat nods. “My son Mekor - he’s a conservator. One of the youngest ever chaired in the High Courts. No doubt he’ll become Archon… perhaps even Chief Archon, like my father before him.”

Despite the heat, Naprem suddenly feels awash in cold, an icy sea washing into the chasm of privilege between them.

“Your father is Chief Archon?” she asks, somewhere between disgust and disbelief.

Dukat seems not to detect her disapproval. Impossibly, he inflates even further, so full of hot air that Naprem wonders if he’s about to float away, if she could pop him with the sharp end of a pin. “So he is - one of the longest serving on record. He has an excellent reputation: stern, but fair. True to the law and to his countrymen.” He’s gripped with passion as he says this, gesturing animatedly. “He serves Cardassia with great dignity. Don’t you think, Damar?”

“Of course, sir,” Damar says, with only enough sincerity to avoid reproach.

“But lest you mistake me, Professor,” Dukat continues. “I didn’t arrive here on the force of my father’s reputation. No - I earned this post and it’s many accolades through dedication, hard work, sacrifice--”

Quark all but springs from the doors of the bar like a booze-soaked jack-in-the-box.

“Gul Dukat!” he exclaims, his grin so full of teeth that it’s hard to look at. Dukat’s expression is so withering he backpedals instantly. “ _Prefect_ ,” he croons, with only the slightest hint of apologies. “Prefect...Gul...Dukat. Welcome! Welcome to my humble establishment.”

Naprem leans into Dukat, keeping her voice low. “Immense patience in the face of adversity?”

Dukat sighs long-sufferingly.

“I heard that,” Quark says. “I won’t have you souring the Prefect’s good opinion of me.”

Naprem raises an eyebrow. “And when will he be acquiring that, Quark?”

She sees Dukat muscle back a grin out of the corner of her eye. Quark looks incensed. 

“Gul Dukat,” he says, with a voice just south of whining.

“You have my full attention, Quark,” Dukat says. “Though I can’t say for how long.”

“Please,” Quark says, extending his hand towards the bar. “Come in. Let me get you a drink.”

“It’s ten in the morning,” Naprem says.

“Two drinks!” Quark calls back over his shoulder. “On the house!”

“Best follow him, sir,” Lukin suggests, scratching a little at his wound. “No telling how long this may take otherwise.”

Dukat sighs, but walks up the steps, the restless tick in his tail again. Naprem follows close behind, flanked by Damar and Lukin.

If the hall was hot, Quark’s is blistering. Naprem hears Lukin whistle lowly behind her. Even Damar shifts, breathing in slow through his nose. Quark’s is a microclimate: billowing hot, the dabo girls wearing so little they may as well be entirely nude, the scent of sweat overpowered by the scent of perfume and alcohol. Naprem feels sweat beginning to spring up on her forehead. Even looking at the Ferengi in their garish head-to-toe suits makes her feel stuffy.

“Quark,” she gasps, fanning herself. “It’s unbearable in here.”

“Unbearable? It’s _abhorrent_ ,” Quark says, pouring them drinks. “No offense, Gul Dukat. But--nothing better for a bar than thirsty patrons.”

In an instant, he’s sliding three glasses of kanar down the bar, and then, with a flick of the wrist, he’s magicked a devilishly dewy concoction up for Naprem. The minty smell of bateret draws her in, even as the ice begins to melt along the rim of her glass. Quark gestures and without him even telling them to, they sit. Naprem takes the ice cold drink into her hands and feels goosebumps go up her arms. The first taste - honey and mint, so cold and smooth that she can barely stand to savor it - almost brings tears to her eyes.

Dukat takes a sip of kanar and releases a pleasurable sigh. “This little malfunction must be good for business.”

“If I had my way, we’d keep it this hot all year round,” Quark says. “You’d be amazed what people will pay for a good drink on a day like this.”

“Desperate times make for reliable customers,” Naprem snipes.

“That’s the spirit,” Quark says, like she’s given him a compliment. “And it’s in that spirit that I’d like to make you a proposition, Gul Dukat - surely you see what good my business does for the station. But there’s something...missing. Don’t you think?”

“No,” Damar says, flatly.

“No,” Lukin says, already halfway through his kanar.

“Not particularly,” Dukat says.

“Regardless, I’m sure you’re about to tell us what it is,” Naprem says.

Quark puts his hands on his hips and looks between them, exasperated.

“Unbelievable. Give people a free drink and they think they know you.”

“We _do_ know you, Quark,” Naprem says. “That’s the problem.”

“You people have no vision,” Quark says. “Except you, Prefect. I’m sure _you’ll_ see what I mean--”

Dukat lifts his glass to his lips and raises a brow ridge.

Quark grits his teeth and launches into his pitch. “Now--look around you. The gambling tables, the girls, the bar. It’s all very fun, isn’t it? Something in here for everyone. But there’s something… missing. Right?” He elbows on before they can reply. “Right! There’s -- a certain element. A certain _something_ \--”

“Quark,” Naprem interrupts. “The Prefect is very busy.”

“Holosuites!” Quark declares. “A lovely pair of holosuites. All the rage in Federation space - why even the dourest of _Vulcans_ can have a good time in a holosuite!”

“Holosuites?” Dukat says. He snorts. Chuckles, shakes his head. “You run a bar, Quark. Not an arcade.”

“I run a bar and _games parlor_ ,” Quark says. “Which isn’t entirely different from an arcade. And I’ve received a _multitude_ of requests. I’m at the mercy of my patrons, Gul Dukat! The people want what they want. And what they want is holosuites!”

“You ever seen a Cardassian in a holosuite?” Lukin asks, voice thick with disdain.

Quark raises his hands to placate. “These would _custom-designed_. No unpleasant bioelectric feedback. It’ll be like you’re really there. You can explore the universe with the push of a button! Go to new and exotic locales… inhabited by new and exotic _fe-males_ …?”

Lukin scoffs. “Females aren’t in short supply here.”

Naprem flushes and glares at the counter. She nurses her drink to give her mouth something to do that isn’t saying what she's thinking.

“The possibilities are endless!” Quark argues. “A holoprogram can take you anywhere you wish - you can do anything!”

Dukat sighs and sips his kanar, drumming his long fingers against his knee. Then, he turns to Naprem.

“What is your opinion of holosuites, Professor?” he asks, and she winces as everyone turns their attention to her. She swallows thickly, choosing her words like chess pieces.

“Suffice to say, I’ve never used one.” She gestures to herself, as if he needs a reminder of her unwashed, threadbare Bajornness. “When the technology was explained to me, I thought it sounded very interesting. The potential is… robust.” 

“Yes,” Quark purrs. “Extremely. Why--”

Naprem talks over him. “Although, I’ve heard the vast majority of them are…”

“Lurid?” Dukat teases.

“Raunchy,” Naprem says.

Dukat nods a little, not correcting her, smiling a little at her disapproving tone. “Holosuites have become a staple of entertainment for the Federation. But the technology isn’t universal in its appeal.”

“Isn’t universal?!” Quark gasps. “Why, Prefect, I’m surprised at you - I’d been led to believe you were a man of great ambition and open-mindedness!”

Dukat’s eyes narrow slowly. “There’s also the morality standards to consider…”

“I assure you, sir, my holosuite programs will meet the Cardassian Morality Code!”

“Oh,” Dukat purrs, leaning so far forward over the counter that the Ferengi visibly shrinks. “They will. This is, after all, a Cardassian installation - and violating the Morality Code could have _dire_ consequences for any business owner so bold as to flaunt them. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Quark swallows. “Of course, sir.”

“Good,” Dukat says, leaning back on his stool.

“Does that mean you’ll sign off on the building contracts?” Quark asks.

Dukat finishes his glass of kanar, and pulls back with a satisfied sigh. He sets his glass on the counter. “I’ll sign them. It’s not my latinum you’re wasting.”

“Oh, _thank you_ , sir, _thank you_ , Gul Dukat--” Quark seizes his hand, grinning. “Oh, you won’t regret this - you’ll see. They’ll be an incredibly valuable addition to--”

“I’ll be surveying your stock of holoprograms very thoroughly,” Dukat says, peeling Quark’s hand off his, looking as though he’d like to amputate any piece of skin he touched.

“Of course,” Quark says, tone overly ingratiating. “Oh, you won’t regret this, sir.”

“For your sake, Quark, let’s hope I don’t.” Dukat rises from his seat, Lukin and Damar right behind him.

Naprem pauses, looking from their finished glasses to her half-full one. Dukat gives her an expectant look. She flushes, then awkwardly gulps down the rest. It hits her instantly, ice and mint and honey and a pleasant burn that makes the room feel cooler. She gets off her stool with an obedient bow of her head. Damar shakes his head and Lukin makes an annoyed noise, but Dukat looks as though he’s resisting the urge to laugh.

“I believe they call that a Bosn sea skimmer,” he says as they walk out.

“It’s Bozn,” Naprem says, correcting his pronunciation. 

Dukat raises a brow ridge and one side of his mouth quirks up just so. Naprem shrugs helplessly, feeling increasingly embarrassed the longer they all stare at her.

“The man makes a good drink,” she says.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t affect your performance,” Lukin says, snidely. He reaches up to begin scratching at his wound again.

Naprem wishes she could’ve taken the cold of the drink with her, if only so the words wouldn’t burn so hotly in her blood.

* * *

 

By the end of the day, the heat has worn a track in her patience and all down her back. She's been nursing a slight hangover since she returned to Records. She thinks she mastered it well enough, but the drink hit her all at once. It isn't as if she's had much alcohol in thirty years of captivity - certainly nothing so strong or in such a short period of time. She hadn't slurred her words or wobbled as she walked, but she had slipped and spoken of herself and Dukat in the plural several more times before the end of rounds - ‘we’ this and ‘we’ that, as though she's in charge of any of it. ‘We don't generally approve of this amount of uridium in a shipment,’ and ‘We appreciate your concern,’ and ‘We'll take it under consideration.’ Dukat hadn’t been able to keep the grin out of his mouth and Naprem had been imagining it all day - the memory of it kept barging in on her peace of mind, just when she thought she'd forgotten it.

All that's left now is the hiccups; her angry stomach clenching traitorously around each new breath, threatening her guts at blunt knifepoint. It's enough to make her want to scream. Nothing helps them - not water, or deep breathing, or a good fright from B’hava’el. Between the hiccups and the heat, she wonders if there's anything about her body she'll ever be able to control.

“I'm going to-- _hic_ \--die li-- _hic_ \--like this,” she says to B’hava’el over dinner.

“How is it that even your medical problems are adorable?”

“I'm serious,” Naprem says, managing to go a full sentence without hiccuping.

“No one ever died of hiccups,” B’hava’el says, calmly, reaching to steal a large spoonful of rice from Naprem's otherwise-pristine bowl.

“I'm almost positive that's-- _hic--_ not true.”

“You know, Cardassians don't get hiccups?”

“What? Whe-- _hic_ \--where did you he-- _hic_ \--ear that?”

B’hava’el just shrugs with a look like this is common knowledge that no one in their right mind would dispute. “They just don't get them.”

“Now that's _definitely_ not true.”

“It is!” 

“It can't possibly be t-- _hic_ \--true unle-- _hic_ \--ess they don't have a-- _hic_ \--diaphra-- _hic_ \--agm, oh for heaven’s _sake_!” Naprem cries, flushed with the effort. “I can't believe I'm going to die-- _hic_ \--debunking your… fritterous nonsense!”

B’hava’el is valiantly resisting the urge to laugh at her. “Neither can I, you feel good about that choice?”

“Not particularly,” Naprem says, clutching her stomach. Another hiccup wracks her and at this rate if they kill her, it'll be a mercy.

B’hava’el bites into a dry slice of moba and grimaces. She muscles through another bite, but Naprem can see it pains her with how bland it is - not that she has any choice. B’hava’el is, after all, a child of the Occupation. She'll never leave anything on her plate if she's physically capable of eating it. But halfway through chewing, she glances up and freezes.

“Hey,” she says slowly, her mouth still full. “You ever talked to Kranti Koafa?”

Naprem frowns, puzzled. “No,” she says. “Not really.” She’d been there when they'd sheared her bald for insubordination, but they've never had any kind of conversation - an ‘excuse me,’ or the occasional greeting when it’s appropriate. Naprem is no more familiar with her than with anyone in the Section 35 sleeping quarters.

B’hava’el is still staring at something over her shoulder, slowly working the moba leather between her teeth. “Ever want to?”

“I don't know,” Naprem says, narrowly missing another hiccup. “Why?”

“Cuz I think you're about to,” B’hava’el says. “She's coming over here.”

Naprem turns around - and so she is. She's making straight for them, her long, fierce face bent around a frown. Kranti is the sort of woman who walks with purpose: pretty, but ever-scowling, with a long, flat nose that point directly down at her mouth, and thin, unsmiling eyes. It was her hair that softened the features of her face, once. Without it, she's indomitable, her sharply angled face the same arching, savage cut as a mountain stripped bare of greenery.

She walks up to Naprem and B’hava’el without pleasantry or pretense.

“You're Tora, right?” she asks. Her voice is low - serious and unflinching.

“Yes,” Naprem says, wondering if she ought to answer at all.

“You got a minute?” Kranti asks, but she doesn't word it like a question.

“...of course,” Naprem answers, and she starts to get up.

“Sit,” Kranti orders. “We don't need to go anywhere.”

Naprem sits back down slowly, feeling very put-on-the-spot.

Kranti shifts, looming over her. She neither puts her hands in her pockets, nor folds her arms. She regards her warily. “You're the Prefect's aide, right?”

“That's right.” Naprem isn't sure when her voice got so small.

“You need to talk to him about the heat.”

“I…” Naprem flushes. Plenty of people have passed her requests, but none of them have been so bold or blunt as Kranti. She can feel B’hava’el watching her from across the table, and she's not the only one. All around the mess, people are turning to stare - not many, but enough for Naprem to feel a tingle of humiliation on the back of her neck. “I've brought it up to him.”

“And?” Kranti asks.

“It's a problem with the environmental controls,” she says, feeling increasingly resentful about this line of inquiry. “He's looking into it.”

“That's not enough,” Kranti says. “You need to go tell him to fix them _now._ ”

Naprem flushes with embarrassment, anger welling beneath her breastbone. “I don't tell the Prefect what to do,” she says.

“You advise him,” Kranti says. “Same thing. Look, either the environmental controls get fixed or people are gonna die. We had eight people faint today in Mine 6. This goes on another day, and people are gonna die of heat stroke.”

She nods to the cluster of old women occupying their chosen corner of the hall, chatting and bantering as they always do. But Naprem can see from their faces what Kranti means - many of the women are pale, abnormally soft spoken, exhausted from a day spent in the heat.

“We’re not built for this,” Kranti says. “He has to understand that - you have to _make him_ understand.”

Naprem swallows, thickly, guilt overwhelming her fury.

“I'll try,” she says.

“Trying doesn't mean a thing,” Kranti says, plainly. “Do it, or people are gonna die, and it's gonna be your fault.”

Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, Kranti stalks off alone. Naprem watches her go, heart ringing with dismay. B’hava’el watches her too, expression grim.

“I think maybe you could've gone a little longer without talking to her,” she says.

“Maybe,” Naprem agrees. They eat in silence for a while before she realizes her hiccups are gone - they've been replaced by little jolts of guilt and dread every time another bead of sweat rolls down her neck. Her stomach aches.

“You alright?” B’hava’el asks, watching her.

“I'm fine,” Naprem lies, and they don't talk much after that.

* * *

 

This time, it’s not the nightmares that make her restless - it’s the guilty burden on her own heart. Her conscience is a cement weight, tugging at her chest, denying her the buoyant exodus of dreams, dragging her back out into the dark. It’s so _hot._ When she’s awake, she can barely stand to move - she just lies there, sweating. Thinking. Dreading.

She wants to help. It’s never been about not _wanting to_. Hell, why else had she taken this miserable job? (Not miserable, her logical mind reminds her - not miserable. Certainly not so miserable as the mines. But isn’t that the point?)

She wants to help. She’s trying. She mentioned the climate controls to him, didn’t she? She mentioned the heat. She mentioned that people would die. Or… maybe she didn’t. Maybe he shut her up before she got there. But she didn’t need to be _told_ , that’s the point. She knows. She’s as desperately, achingly worried as Kranti is - or at least, as worried as she thinks she is. She’s not sure why else she’d bring it up. They’re all Bajoran. They’re mindful of these things, it’s only natural.  

But why didn’t she _insist_ , she wonders. Why did she let him change the subject? Why isn’t she more assertive with him, lately? Ever since Darhe’el was here--

Her stomach lurches with such force inside her that her hands come up to catch it. Every time she thinks of him, her heart leaps into the back of her mouth, her teeth grind, her head hurts. She closes her eyes, pushes her breath out slow. It still shakes inside her, comes rattling out, reedy and thin. She puts a hand to her forehead. The heat is oppressive - it blankets her, it presses down on her stomach and her head, it covers her nose, it suffocates her. It pushes its fingers into her mouth.

She jolts as another wave of nausea and terror rolls through her. Her bunkmate huffs, disgruntled, and she rolls over to avoid annoying them further. She covers her face and hushes her mind like an unruly child, her own annoyance pulsing; latent panic a tug at her navel. She doesn’t want to think about him. She doesn’t want to think about any of this. She doesn’t want to be awake. She wants to go to sleep, to attach this train of thought to the anchor of her guilt and let them both sink, release them like a rock into a vast ocean of things she can’t control and doesn’t know how to make peace with.

Make _peace_. She sounds like Uru. How does anyone make peace in times like these? If she created peace here, within herself, within this station, would the children of the Occupation even recognize it? Would they even know what it looked like?

She’s behaving. Prophets, that’s what she’s doing, and it gives her another fright to realize. She’s behaving. She’s bowing her head and taking Dukat’s orders. She’s never stopped biting her tongue since Darhe’el walked back out through the doors and now it’s numb and dumb in her mouth. When Dukat orders her to let something go, she’s letting it go. And she hasn’t the slightest idea why.

When did she become this person, fearful and annoyed by her obligations to others? Afraid to speak, lest she disturb the tenuous peace between herself and a stranger - a man, a _Cardassian_ man.

 _Hush_ , she tells her mind, _hush!_ But her thoughts go pinwheeling off in the darkness like fireworks, painting her brain in a thousand sparkling shades of guilt. It tugs at her, it pushes her teeth into her lip and her knees up against her chest. It pushes her face into her hands, harder, ever harder - _go to sleep. Go to sleep. Stop thinking. It will be there in the morning. Stop thinking and go to sleep._

It’s so hot.

Long ago and far away, Onea would be up by now, urging her to roll over, lie on her back between she and Uru. She’d say the same thing, but there’d be something else - she’d rub her cool doctor’s hands over Naprem’s back, and massage her temples, movements so precise and calm that Naprem would wonder if they were rehearsed.

The more Naprem thinks about her, the more she tries to think of what she would’ve said - the more she reaches her mind out into the void and finds it empty. Her memories are too old. They can no longer furnish her delusions. She can barely remember her voice. She tries to conjure what she’d say, what she’d say next. _‘Good girl,’_ Onea used to call her. _‘My good girl.’_

_Do you have family, Tora?_

The tears come on like another wave of hiccups - a pinch in the ribs, a hitch of her breath.

“Shh!” her bunkmate snarls. “Some of us have real work to do in the morning.”

Naprem sinks her teeth into her lip and covers her mouth to still her breathing. Her head aches from the effort of damming her tears. She curls into a ball and tries very hard to be silent.

 _Shouldn’t be too hard,_ a savage little voice says inside her head. _You’ve been very good at it so far._

* * *

 

It’s hot even in the darkest early morning hours - Naprem knows because she lies awake for most of them. She sleeps until a noise wakes her - some loud clatter on the promenade - and then the ambient noise of the station is too much for her to fall back asleep. She dozes off-and-on, too tired to open her eyes, but also too tired to turn off her mind, until she finally falls back asleep an hour before the rollcall siren. It bleats so loudly it could be directly into her ear, and as soon as she sits up, she’s angry. She’s hot, and she’s angry.

The guard who scans the chip in her wrist grabs her wrist too hard and she takes it back with a glare. She grimaces all through her sonic shower, and leaves with her ears ringing. She eats angry - dry crackers and chilled alva slathered in yamok sauce, _again_ , where do they _get_ the damn stuff? She downs her water and goes back for seconds, annoyed with the noise and the people and the crowding. She’s shoulder-to-shoulder no matter where she goes, shimmying through the crowd, each body she brushes past hotter than the last. The noise that woke her out on the habitat ring is ongoing, unceasing - an endless clatter and clinking, a banging, a slamming. Between the heat and the lack of sleep, every noise seems grating, every touch irritating.

Her tired, aching whole body is buzzing with the impetus to _do something_ , and oh, she’s going to do something alright. She has no idea what, but it’s humming inside her, a clattering lid on a boiling pot about to overflow. She clenches her fists as she’s swept out with the tide, and forces her way through the crowd towards Operations.

When she steps out of the list, Dukat’s standing near the center of the room, leaning against the star charts, engaged in conversation with a small cluster of his men. She’s never found him outside his office first thing in the morning, but he’s loose-limbed and grinning. Damar’s watching him from his console, smiling secretively to himself and shaking his head in an affectionate, exasperated way that he must think no one can see. 

“So,” Dukat says, with the sharp punctuation of a punchline, “to answer your question, I believe that may be why I’m no longer sought after for diplomatic missions to the Orion sector.”

The soldiers gathered around laugh and grin at one another, rubbing their hands and clutching their bellies. Dukat smiles, chuckling a little at his own joke. Damar dips his head strategically when Dukat looks over at him, as though they don’t both know he finds him just as funny and charming as anyone. It’s all very boys-club, and as second after second passes with everyone laughing and grinning at one another, and not one person noticing her in the room, Naprem’s fury grows.

She steps off the lift and still, not one of them turns around, not one of them looks up. She remains utterly invisible, inconsequential, forgotten. Somewhere inside her, the indignant, haughty academic she once was rears her head. She pulls herself upright, schools her features into something cool and disapproving and says, dourly: “Good morning, Gul Dukat.”

The soldiers jerk upright, tails going ramrod straight. Dukat sits up, looking surprised. The humor vanishes from Damar’s countenance. For just a second, they look like a gaggle of schoolboys who’ve been caught misbehaving.

“Professor Tora,” Dukat says, smiling but confused. “Good morning.”

“May I please speak to you?” she asks, just as coldly.

Dukat creases his brow. He looks around at the crowd of soldiers, all of whom have gone oddly silent and meek, as though they’re all embarrassed to have been caught carousing.

“Of course,” he says, with a little shrug. He makes no movement towards his office.

Naprem narrows her eyes. “Privately,” she says to encourage him.

There’s an odd movement in Dukat’s neckridges - color? A slight flush, like an old bruise, along the outermost prominent ridgeline. Not a second after she sees it, Naprem wonders if she imagined it. But then, Dukat stands from the center console and tips his head.

“Of course,” he says, cordially.

Naprem walks towards his office. He follows her. They meet, awkwardly, near the stairs. He gestures for her to go first, and follows her up. The soldiers watch them go in silence, like they’re waiting for permission to return to their posts. As the doors of his office close behind them, they swallow up the awkward, eerie quiet.

“Now,” Dukat says, with that same infuriatingly patient tone of his, “what’s this about?”

“You have to fix the environmental controls.”

Dukat blinks, then looks her up and down. He narrows his eyes like he thinks he misheard her, then cocks his head.

“I told you I would make it a priority.”

“And have you?”

“Yes,” he says. He paces slowly towards his desk like he’s waiting for her to stop him, head still turned towards her, hands held behind his back. “I’ve contacted our Chief Engineer - she said she’ll look into fixing it at her earliest convenience.”

Naprem’s mouth is too full of disbelief for her to hold it closed. “Which will be when, exactly?”

“ _Professor_ ,” Dukat says, looking as perplexed with her as she is with him. “The engineering department is extraordinarily busy. Now, I apologize if you find yourself slightly uncomfortable with the new--”

“ _Me?_ This isn’t about _me!_ ” Naprem exclaims. “I could care less what temperature it is! You think I’m coming to you with this because I’m a little _sweatier_ than normal?” 

The surprise on Dukat’s face says yes, he does think that, and before he can work the reply out of his mouth, Naprem’s already jumped in to cut him off. “Bajorans are endothermic - our body temperatures are maintained metabolically, we _cannot_ survive in temperatures too extreme for our bodies to stabilize. The station climate controls are currently at 38 **°** , which is perfectly comfortable for you, vaguely uncomfortable for me, and _unlivable_ for anyone working in the mines, which were already too hot to begin with!”

Dukat frowns, turning back towards her. “Have there been casualties, Professor?”

Naprem raises her eyebrows, shocked by him. “Not yet,” she says. “But there will be.”

Dukat raises his hands, trying to ward off her aggression. “Perhaps,” he says. “And at that time--” 

“At _that time_ , it will be too late!” Naprem cries. “I'm telling you this heat is deadly, and your plan is to wait until we have the bodies to prove it?! People are going to die!”

“That remains to be seen,” Dukat insists, and she can tell be the firmness of his tone that he's getting annoyed. “It will take time to fix the climate controls, Professor. I advise you to be patient.”

Panic flutters its wings at the edge of her temper, and she goes cascading into placation territory without wanting to.

“You could vent the mines. Circulate the air. Surely there's a way to make it cooler--”

“Not without contaminating the uridium ore,” Dukat says, leaning back against his desk.

“You could offer more breaks. More water.”

“Our production numbers are uncharacteristically low as it is.”

“Because your workers are too hot!” Naprem cries.

“Professor,” Dukat says, and the annoyance has seeped into his breath and into his posture. “I appreciate your position. I don't want to see these workers suffer any more than you do. But I must insist that you try to consider _my_ position for a moment. Two weeks ago, Gul Darhe’el and his men nearly seized this station - it is imperative that I avoid leaving any of my superiors with the idea that he was onto something.”

“And letting members of your workforce die of heatstroke is your idea of strong leadership?” Naprem snaps.

“Professor,” Dukat says, and the word cuts across the room. “I’ll remind you: I have invited your counsel. Not your insubordination.” 

Naprem flushes and looks down at the floor, swallowing around the lump of her pride. Her fists are clenched at her sides. She feels almost seasick: queasy and off-kilter. She can feel Dukat watching her, waiting for her to speak again. She doesn't.

Finally, he sighs, seeming satisfied with her genuflection. “If you think it's necessary, I can order our medical officers to be on standby, in case of any heat-related emergencies.”

Cardassians don't experience heat-related emergencies. Naprem doesn't imagine they'll be even remotely qualified to help anyone who needs it, and besides that, Dr. Tebua wouldn't waste medical supplies on a dying Bajoran unless she were directly ordered to - and Dukat isn't talking about direct orders. In fact, he isn't talking about direct action of any kind.

But it's better than nothing.

So Naprem swallows her pride altogether and says to the floor, “Thank you, sir.”

Dukat's shoulders relax slowly - Naprem sees him let them down from where he'd reeled them up towards his chin. “Of course,” he says, genially, as though he thinks he's being very generous about all this. “I am trying to be reasonable, Professor. Surely you don't think I take pleasure in this sordid business?”

Actually, she's quite certain that he does. Maybe he doesn't delight in her people’s suffering, but the heat wave isn't hurting him any. On the contrary, it's rejuvenated him - even now, he's so ripe with energy that looking directly at him exhausts her. Enthusiasm and good humor pulses from him like an offensive odor. The constant laughing and carousing has rendered him repulsively handsome, all uncouth wit and schoolboy sprawl.

Why should he worry? Why should he care? Why should he deign to shed his own comfort for the sake of those in his charge? Her concerns aren’t his concerns. Maybe they never were.

“I urge you to consider what I've said,” Naprem says, lowly. “If the climate controls can't be fixed, any action we could take to reduce--”

“I'll take it under consideration,” Dukat says, dismissively. “Is there anything else?”

“...no,” Naprem says. 

“Good,” Dukat says, standing and straightening, smoothing his cape. He paces back across the floor until they're standing close together. “I should hate for such a small misunderstanding to disrupt the… productivity. Of our current arrangement.”

Naprem looks up at him, unable to keep the reproach off her face.

“Of course, sir,” she says, tongue heavy with blame.

She goes all through rounds without saying another word.

* * *

 

She goes the whole day like that - swallowing her pride, swallowing her words. She’s silent all through rounds, all through the walk back to Operations. She says nothing as Damar and Dukat chat back and forth, nothing in the lift, nothing when he dismisses her from his office. He doesn’t even seem to notice.   

The heat is unceasing, unending, utterly pitiless. By the time she clocks out at the Records office, her temper is a sticky residue joining the sweat under her collar, resentment a stubborn grit under her nails. Her head hurts from frowning all day.

B’hava’el’s waiting for her outside, dolled up and luscious for the start of her “shift” working the promenade all night. Naprem tries to look happy to see her.

“Hey,” B’hava’el says. “What’s up? You look upset.”

Naprem sighs - evidently she isn’t trying hard enough.

“It’s nothing,” she says.

“Mm,” B’hava’el tuts, pushing off the wall to walk with her. “Doesn’t look like nothing. You talk to Dukat?”

“Of course I talked to Dukat,” Naprem snaps.

“Ah,” B’hava’el says. “Sounds like it went really well.”

“It went _swimmingly_.”

“Well, it hasn’t gotten _hotter_ today,” B’hava’el says. “That’s an upside, at least.”

“He wouldn’t even _consider_ \--” Naprem stops herself short. “It doesn’t matter,” she tells herself.

“No, come on,” B’hava’el says, seriously. “You need to let this out, _cheli._ Come on. Like pus in a wound. Tell me about it.”

“He just--” Naprem starts up, then loses herself in another bluster of fury. “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Just start at the beginning.”

“I brought it up to him first thing this morning. I made sure he knew it was serious - these Cardassians, they think this is all a big game! They gamble with our lives like they mean _nothing_.”

“What’d you say?”

“I told him that he needed to take action, or people were going to die. I told him that if the controls couldn’t be fixed in the immediate future, we needed to find a way to circulate air in the mines, make sure the workers were well-hydrated, let them rest…”

“And he said…?”

“He asked me if there’d been any casualties! And when I said there hadn’t been--”

“Oh sure, not _yet_ , there haven’t been.”

“That’s what I said!” Naprem says, feeling a wash of gratitude at the indignance in B’hava’el’s tone.

“It’s only a matter of time,” B’hava’el agrees.

“That’s _precisely_ what I told him!”

“And? What’s he going to do?”

“He said he’d tell Dr. Tebua to help anyone who seemed to be suffering.”

B’hava’el scoffs. “Oh, so nothing then.”

“Less than nothing!” Naprem says, throwing her hands up. “Tebua doesn’t waste medical supplies on Bajorans, she’s said as much at every available opportunity. And she’s not going to have the slightest idea what she’s dealing with - he said it to shut me up. He’s not going to do a damn thing to help anyone.” She feels sick with fury and disappointment. Did she really think he was different? Did she really think he was going to go on to impress her? _Once_ the man puts himself between her and her nightmares and suddenly she’s willing to think the best of him, despite all evidence to the contrary.

...well. Twice. Twice, alright, maybe three times he put himself between her and--

It doesn’t matter. He’s a Cardassian. She should know better by now.

B’hava’el sighs as they emerge onto the promenade, shaking her head. The crowds move more sluggishly than usual, workers hanging their heads and rubbing their brows whether they’re leaving the mines or entering them. The ones leaving, clocking out of the morning shift, look both bright red and ghostly pale, sick and exhausted from twelve hours spent in the molten heat of the mines. Sweat drips off them, soaking their clothes, and they heave for breath. B’hava’el and Naprem pause as an unsteady stream of them stumble past, weak and hazy with heat.

B’hava’el leans into Naprem once they’re past, rubbing her arm. “Hey,” she says. “You did good. You said something. There’s nobody else who can do that, y’know? You tried to make him understand, at least.” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Naprem says, hanging her head.

B’hava’el reaches out and turns Naprem to face her, squeezing her shoulders. “Hey. Objectively not true. Look at me.” She cups Naprem’s cheek, guiding her face up. Naprem flushes at the attention and B’hava’el smiles a small, tired, reassuring smile. “You tried. That’s all anybody can ask.”

Naprem turns her head away again, and B’hava’el lets her. She swallows and lets out a long sigh through her nose. She did try. But Kranti’s right - trying doesn’t mean a damn thing.

“Hey,” B’hava’el interrupts, shaking her a little to get her to look up. “I know that look. No more blaming yourself, okay? C’mon, cheer up. Eastern flowers like you love the heat.”

“Not this kind of heat,” Naprem grumps.

“Oh, yeah? Not steamy enough for ya?” B’hava’el shimmies her shoulders a little and despite the weight on her chest, Naprem huffs out a reluctant laugh.

“It’s better when it’s humid,” Naprem argues.

“It’s not.” B’hava’el says. “It’s...not. At all. You’re insane.”

“I’m not!”

“You are. You completely are.” They step out onto the promenade, walking slowly towards the mess. As they approach Quark’s, the incessant clatter that’s been grating Naprem’s nerves since the early morning grows louder and louder.

“Hey, crazy,” B’hava’el says. “Is Quark building holosuites?”

“Is _that_ what that noise is?” Naprem wonders aloud. She supposes it makes sense, but if she finds the noise unbearable she can only imagine the havoc it’s wreaking on Quark’s Ferengi ears. Anything for profit, she supposes. “Dukat signed the construction permits yesterday - I didn’t think he’d start building the second he got them.”

B’hava’el turns her head to give her a look. “Tora, he can’t do that. How am I supposed to compete with a holosuite?”

“Oh, come now,” Naprem says, wrinkling her nose.

“I’m serious!” B’hava’el says. “You better get Dukat ready, ‘cause he’s about to have a riot in the comfort sector - holographic girls? How are we supposed to compete with holographic girls? _Customizable_ girls?”

“I have it on good authority that most Cardassians don’t enjoy holosuites,” Naprem says. She gestures vaguely to her forehead. “They find the bioelectric feedback disorienting. Dukat claims they make him sick.”

“Well he better pray they make everyone sick,” B’hava’el says. “Especially if this heat keeps up. Do you know how rowdy Cardassians get when they’re all hot under the collar? I’m fine for now, but they’re running me ragged, y’know? I can’t keep up. Last night, I had a guy wanted to go _six times_. Six times! For the price of one!”

Naprem ‘ _yecks_ ’ a little in the back of her throat. B’hava’el rolls her eyes.

“My problems,” she says, pointedly. “My problems, _cheli_. Focus. Y’know, he’s already talking to some girls - wants ‘em to give him their body scan. Says it’s payment for all the times we’ve worked out of his bar. Maybe I’m gonna be out here competing with holo-me.”

“We’ll modify his contract,” Naprem says, as calmly as possible. “If he wants to use your likenesses, he’ll have to pay you royalties.”

B’hava’el considers this for a moment, then nods. “Yeah. Alright, that’d work.” She pauses. “‘We’, huh? You gonna run that by Dukat?”

Naprem flushes, dismay bunching in her throat. She looks down and away, trying to find a way to brush it off. She doesn’t mean to keep _saying_ that - we, we, we.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine with it,” Naprem says, though of course now that she’s saying it, she isn’t sure of any such thing. Even saying so feels preposterous. What does he care if the comfort workers riot? What does he care about any of it?

As they walk by Quark’s they peer in, leaning around the doorframe. The banging is calamitous - between the zip of drills, the hiss of welding beams, the clatter and bang of metal being thrown around and the whirl of dabo, Naprem can barely hear herself think. Unbelievably, the bar is still thick with patrons, some shielding their ears from the noise, but most not even bothering. The Cardassians don’t even seem to notice a difference. The construction goes off like artillery fire and none of them even seem to notice, laughing and pushing to get close to the dabo girls, spilling their drinks and their latinum all over the tables.

Quark spots them peeking, and shouts over from the bar: “Paying customers only!”

“Shut up, Quark!” B’hava’el yells back.

“I can’t believe he’s still open,” Naprem says.

“I can,” says B’hava’el. She draws herself upright, clearly thinking, then she turns to Naprem. “Wanna head in?”

“Now?”

“Yeah,” B’hava’el says. She gives her a sympathetic look. “Come on. You could use a drink.”

Naprem can’t argue with that. She sighs. “...one. The noise is giving me a headache.”

They head in. It’s as sweltering hot as it was yesterday. The dabo girls are fighting valiantly to avoid sweating their glitter off, deftly dodging overly-familiar hands with their usual charm but an unusually obvious annoyance. As she passes close to one of them, B’hava’el reaches out and surreptitiously slaps away several pairs of outstretched fingers before their owners can even see what’s happened. The girls give her reluctant looks of gratitude.

They sit at the bar near the door, where the noise is only slightly better than anywhere else. Quark scuttles over to them in a huff.

“I _said_ \--”

“I heard you,” B’hava’el says. She dips into her cleavage for a strip of latinum and waves it in front of his nose. “Drinks for me and my date, you little toad.”

Quark snatches the latinum out of her hand in a blink, and beams like he welcomed them in.

“Of _course_!” he says, all smiles. “Anything for my customers.”

“You’d think he’d go to a little more trouble to butter you up,” B’hava’el says to Naprem. “This is the Prefect’s aide,” she says to Quark. “You might want to be a little nicer, next time she comes by.”

“Try having your latinum in plain view next time,” Quark suggests.

“You certainly don’t waste any time,” Naprem observes, watching as two Ferengi struggle out of the back room holding a few gawky pieces of metal sheeting.

“You can’t blame a man for making money,” Quark says, serenely.

“Can’t you?” Naprem asks.

Quark ignores her, mixing their drinks. “I’m on the cutting edge, ladies. It takes a keen business instinct to find to tomorrow’s profit, and I don’t intend to bow to the competition.”

“You don’t have any competition,” Naprem says.

“See?” Quark says, proudly. “What’d I tell you?”

He puts their drinks down in front of them just as a rowdy group of soldiers surges up to the other end of the bar and begins shouting for him, waving their latinum around like a dinner bell. Quark scrambles off to attend them, practically salivating, and Naprem sighs and shakes her head.

“Hey,” B’hava’el says, getting her attention again. “Cheers.”

She lifts her glass and Naprem reluctantly clinks it with her one. They raise their pinkies and cluck their tongues in unison. “Cheers,” they both murmur, trying to feel it. It’s more ritual now than anything. Naprem tries to take solace in her drink - buttery and sweet, three layers of decadent Denobulan liquor in yellow, burgundy and red.

The gaggle of soldiers at the end of the bar hoot and rubberneck as a dabo girl emerges fresh from the back, and Naprem sighs into her drink. B’hava’el pulls the alva candy stir-stick out of her drink and begins picking her teeth with it, skillfully avoiding the rouge on her lips. She watches the soldiers leer with a practiced indifference.

“You think Dukat likes you?”

Naprem blinks, turning to face her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think he _likes_ you?”

“What? No!” Naprem’s whole face wrinkles up in confusion and disgust. “No! Absolutely not! He’s married!”

“Like that makes any difference,” B’hava’el says, threading the sharp tip of the candy stick between her teeth. “Most of my clients are married. Cardassian men all get married early.”

“He’s not interested,” Naprem says. “And neither am I.”

“Yeah, I’ll believe one half of that’s true,” B’hava’el says. She dips the stick into her drink again, swirling it against the slush of crushed ice. “I’m not saying it needs to go anywhere - I’m just saying.” She gives Naprem an appreciative once-over. “You’ve got something to work with there, _cheli._ You don’t have to let him have any, but Cardassian men are the same as every other kind - wag something they like in their face and they pay attention.”

Naprem’s stomach roils with revulsion and she physically recoils. She feels ill, and the heat only makes it worse - the air was already thick, and the revulsion doubles it. Her throat feels tight. It’s hard to breathe.

“Never,” she gasps. “Never - _never_ , I will _never_ \--”

“Alright,” B’hava’el shrugs, dismissing Naprem’s panic as casually as she incited it. “I mean, you don’t have to do anything. I’m just saying. If you want him to pay attention…”

“ _Never_ ,” Naprem says, sharply.

“Alright,” B’hava’el says. She lifts her candy stick and snaps the end off with her teeth.

Naprem exhales the breath she was saving for another terse word or two. She’s rigid on her barstool. The atmosphere between them is awkward - Naprem pulsing with a panicked disgust she can’t let go of, B’hava’el clearly trying to act like she’s not bothered by it.

She doesn’t mean anything by it. She always means to say so, but she never does - she never _can_. The very thought leaves her paralyzed - petrified in the amber of her own panic and disgust. It doesn’t have anything to do with what B’hava’el does for a living, but Naprem can tell, looking at her, that she thinks it does. There’s a rigidness to her shoulders, a certainty, each time this happens, that Naprem’s neutrality on the subject of comfort work has been a ruse all along.

Naprem’s about to apologize, reaching for her words and B’hava’el’s wrist, when a shrill sound pierces the raucous din of the bar: out on the promenade, there, barely within earshot between the soldier’s laughter and the clacking of the dabo wheels, Naprem could swear she hears someone screaming.

She struggles to make it out, turning her head. A bolt of fear goes up her spine, the hair rising on the back of her neck.

“Help!” someone’s shouting. “Someone please help! Please!”

She’s off her stool and B’hava’el’s right behind her, moving through the bar like a shot, pushing through the crowd.

In the center of the promenade, a woman is sobbing, tearing at her hair, plain, wide face crumpled with grief. “Please! Someone!”

People are clustered around her - some on purpose, staring, murmuring amongst themselves, some by accident, nearly tripping over her as they move to and fro. The soldiers on duty are eyeing her from a distance, but none of them have moved to help her. She’s staring around, hyperventilating and wide-eyed, wiry hair clutched between her fingers. Naprem pushes people aside, going to her, drawn by an incessant yanking at her heartstrings. She grabs her by the shoulders and the woman looks at her like a sleepwalker coming awake. Her jaw trembles.

“What is it?” Naprem asks. “What’s going on?”

“Help her!” B’hava’el hisses at the gawkers. “What’s wrong with you people?”

“My husband,” the woman gasps. “Please, my husband - my husband, he works the night shift - he came back before my shift this morning, and - he won’t wake up, I can’t wake him up, _please_ \--”

“Show me,” Naprem says, ice cold dread settling in her chest. “Take me to him.”

They practically run to the Section 56 co-ed barracks. B’hava’el follows with a scant few of the onlookers, all of whom look distinctly abashed. The woman won’t let go of Naprem’s hand - she clutches it like her only lifeline. They pass through the doorway and run up the crowded aisles between the rows of cots.

The woman’s husband is lying on his front on their cot, clearly having collapsed onto it just after his shift. He’s barely middle-aged, deep-set eyes creased by hard work more than age. His skin is sallow; one of his shoes dangles from his toes, only half-way off.

The woman trembles and sobs, putting her hand on his back and shaking him.

“Nir,” she whimpers. “Nir, please...”

Naprem reaches out, gingerly touching her hands to the man’s neck. His skin is dry and molten. He’s burning with fever. His breathing is shallow.

“We have to get him to the medical bay,” she says.

“Why?” the woman asks. “Why, what’s happening?”

“He has heat stroke,” Naprem says. “We have to get him to a doctor -- help me!” she barks at the onlookers, and they dart forward, looking abashed. Naprem rolls the man over, then gets her hands under his arms as the onlookers take him by his feet. Nir’s wife grabs for his hand and squeezes, clutching her mouth.

“Who’s on duty?” Naprem asks B’hava’el. 

B’hava’el turns her head, spots the guards, and shouts across the room. “Hey! Mimet! Look alive, we’ve got a man dying over here!”

Glinn Mimet goes straight-backed just as Nir’s wife lets out another sob. He comes over with clear reluctance, his partner following close behind.

“What’s going on here?”

“This man is dying of heat stroke, he needs to be taken to sick bay,” Naprem says.

“Gul Dukat’s going to need to approve that,” Mimet says.

“He already has!” Naprem snarls. “Now help me!”

In the end, it’s just as they’re laying Nir down on a sickbed that Glinn Alomar arrives with another three Bajorans in tow, all crying and clutching their motionless partners.

“My wife,” one of the women whimpers.

“My brother,” says another.

“My son,” says the man. “Please…”

There’s another six before sunrise. Naprem knows because she stays in the med bay to authorize them all. B’hava’el stays with her, delegating, sitting with the families. Tebua grumbles and snaps at them, but Dukat’s orders mean she can’t chase them out. The patients lay in a row, vitals falling steadily, fevers climbing. Finally, B’hava’el walks her back to Section 35, and she lies there in the dark, heart pounding, inside occupied by a colony of ants. The heat sits on her chest until she starts to choke.

She only gets an hour of sleep before clock in.

* * *

 

Dukat reviews the report on his PADD and sighs. His thin lips are drawn into a disappointed moue. He shakes his head slowly. 

“Regrettable,” he says. “Highly regrettable.”

Naprem is standing, staring at him from across his desk. She’s nursing an abominable, pounding headache brought on by the heat and the lack of sleep. Impossibly, it’s hotter today than ever; less like a summer’s day and more like an oven. It’s really only the adrenalin and the righteous fury keeping Naprem upright - she’s thin-skinned and fragile-boned, and practically _vibrating_ with anger.

“That’s it?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper. “That’s all you have to say?”

Dukat glances up at her and frowns. He clearly can’t make out what she just said, but he doesn’t ask her to repeat it, which means he’s caught a taste of her venom on the air regardless. He taps his forefinger slowly against his gaunt cheek, where it rests on his hand.

“It appears you were right, Professor,” he says, casting the PADD carelessly down on his desk. “I didn’t realize how quickly Bajoran biology could be compromised by such a minor temperature adjustment. Dr. Tebua informs me we may see as many as forty-five casualties by this time tomorrow.”

Naprem clenches her fists so tightly that her wrists begin to tremble. She doesn’t need to be told she was right. She _knows_ she was right.  

“What are you planning to do about it?” she asks.

Dukat tilts his head into a small shrugging movement. “I’ll have to instruct Chief Engineer Marel to make it her top priority.”

“And?”

Dukat frowns a little deeper. “And,” he says, rising from his desk, “having considered your suggestion yesterday… the mine overseers have orders to freely dispense water to whomever requests it.”

Naprem blinks at him, and it’s hard to breathe again. She’s flabbergasted by his inaction, by his casual disregard of the whole thing. “Whomever _requests it_?” she repeats. “Nobody’s going to request it, when have they ever been allowed to request anything of the overseers? They need to be given breaks! They need to be monitored for signs of heat stroke!”

“I’ll be making an announcement to the workers to encourage them to take action, should they show any symptoms.” 

“They’ll be dehydrated and delirious, they won’t be able to take action!”

“Professor,” Dukat says, seriously. “You cannot hold _me_ to blame if your people do not advocate for their own health.”

Naprem stares at him, disbelief and outrage tumbling in her chest, leaping and clawing at her throat. Can’t hold him to blame? _Can’t hold him to blame?_

They’re interrupted by the door - Damar and Lukin walk into the room, both wearing impatient expressions.

“Sir,” Damar says. “Shall we?”

Dukat’s face relaxes and he takes a breath, nodding once. Before he follows Damar and Lukin back out of the room, he turns to Naprem.

“I expect this unpleasant business to be concluded within the week,” he says, tone patient and patronizing. “I appreciate your commitment to addressing it, and I value your advice. But I urge you not to take this so personally.”

“Ten people are dead,” Naprem says, her voice ragged and breathless. “People are dying. On _your_ station. Right now, at this very moment.”

Dukat tips his head a little, looking straight into her, wearing an almost confused expression. It’s like he can’t understand what she means - like he thinks she’s saying something else, somewhere behind her words, but he can’t possibly decipher what it is. It’s utterly discombobulating.

“Professor,” he says, slowly. “We’re doing everything we can. I’ll have to ask you to be patient.”

He walks out of the room, and Naprem’s left staring after him, agape, drowning like a fish on dry land.

Everything he can? Everything he _can?_ He’s not doing anywhere _near_ everything he can. How can he possibly-- How can he say that with a straight face?

She follows after him in a daze. She fumbles with her PADD as they step into the lift - her fingers are numb with panic and disbelief and she forgets, for a second, that she’s holding it. She pulls it back to herself with a clatter, and Damar gives her a sidelong look ripe with condescension. Naprem ignores him, heart thundering in her chest, fingers numb, stomach churning like she ate something rotten.

“Any news from Central Command?” Dukat asks Damar.

“None, sir.”

Dukat hums and shifts slowly on his feet. “If they’re planning on a reprisal…”

Lukin grunts. “Not ‘til the end of the trial, I’d reckon.”

“They may not have one for you, sir,” Damar says. “Nobody could challenge the quality of your conduct during that time.”

“I think they may do it all the same,” Dukat sighs. “Though I agree with you, Damar, that I conducted myself unimpeachably…”

Naprem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and she doesn’t care to ask. Her mind is racing in a drunken tumult, spinning and whirling, all color and nausea and feverish feeling. She’s thinking about Nir, about his wife - his widow, now. She’s struggling to breathe. The air seems to get hotter and hotter as they descend to the promenade. She reaches up to her collar and tugs at it. The movement catches Dukat’s notice.

“Something the matter, Professor?”

“I can’t breathe,” she murmurs, but the lift doors slide open as she says it. The noise of the promenade washes over her words, and they’re lost, like flecks of white foam in a receding wave.

Dukat forges a path through the crowd, Lukin and Damar beside him. Naprem follows behind feeling hazy and drunk. The whole world swims. It’s so hot that the air is heavy, that her whole face begins the sweat. Sweat beads beneath her eyes and on the backs of her ears, along the back of her neck and under her arms. She feels it in the small of her back and at the base of her throat, clutching at her filthy, ragged workers uniform. She struggles to breathe, struggles to keep her feet. As they near the first shop, she’s buffeted out of the way by two Cardassian soldiers - they move brusque and businesslike through the crowd, hauling the splayed, loose-limbed body of a Bajoran woman between them. Naprem stares after them, then whips her head around - she’s lost Dukat in the crowd.

By the time she catches up with him, they’ve already started without her. The tech resaler is complaining about his low numbers.

“Now Prefect,” he says, hands on his hips, “I’ve been campaigning for months for more space, so that I can offer a shooting gallery, or a gun range - but you’ve declined my requests!”

“Unfortunately, as I’ve said, the unstable nature of raw uridium would make such an addition unwise,” Dukat says, calmly.

“That may be,” the tech resaler says, “but whatever danger the raw uridium might pose, I promise you, Quark’s holosuites represent a far greater danger to the moral integrity of this station, which _I’d_ argue is vastly more important.”

Dukat smiles, slow and insincere. “Well,” he says, “I’ll take that under consideration.”

The tech resaler puffs out his chest in an immensely self-important way. “ _Thank_ you, Gul Dukat,” he says, like he really thinks Dukat is going to do a damn thing to help him.

It’s only as they’re walking away that Naprem realizes she doesn’t even have the transcription software open on her PADD. She looks down at the blank screen, but doesn’t open it. She can’t will her fingers to make the practiced motion; she can’t act like any of this bears recording. It doesn’t. She doesn’t bother, though it feels wrong and dangerous - it sends an ominous thrill up through her chest, a drunken, uncoordinated spike of fear. She’s sure one of them is going to look over. Someone’s going to notice she isn’t doing as she’s been told. But no one does.

Instead, they begin talking amongst themselves again as soon as they get out of earshot. 

“Quark certainly doesn’t waste any time,” Dukat says, thoughtfully.

“No, sir,” Damar agrees. “Sounds like he finished the holosuites off last night - they’ve been up and running for about two hours.”

“I don’t recall receiving a list of his programs,” Dukat says. “Do you?” he asks Lukin.

“No, sir,” Lukin says.

“Curious,” Dukat says with a lilt of amusement. “Perhaps we ought to drop in and see what the fuss is about.”

“And if he’s properly observing the Morality Code,” Lukin grumbles.

“I doubt it,” Damar says.

Naprem feels invisible - like she’s even less than a puff of air.

There’s a line out the door of Quark’s bar - a river of people several bodies thick, all craning their necks and shuffling impatiently. As they draw nearer, Naprem can make Quark out at the head of the group, dressed in a truly hallucinatory combination of textures and colors the likes of which Naprem has never seen and struggles to describe. Between the technicolor, holographic ascot and the ultraviolet waistcoat, it almost seems like he himself could be a hologram, computer-customized by whatever obscure, outdated algorithm determines Ferengi high fashion.

“Right this way, right this way!” he calls over the crowd. A few of the waiters are slinking through the crowd, taking drink orders. “Just a little longer, folks, and you’ll be on a holo-adventure unlike anything you’ve ever experienced!”

Dukat wades a few people deep into the crowd, then stops and pointedly clears his throat. No one turns to look at him - they're all too riveted to pay him any attention. Naprem resists her automatic flush of satisfaction.

Lukin moves forward, scratching at his wound and snarling. “Make a path,” he barks, and people jump out of his way, looking back at him with surprise and resentment.

“No need to push,” Quark says as they make their way through the crowd. “There's room enough at Quark’s for everyone - have your latinum ready, this offer’s good one per person, we charge by the program - it's by appointment, please make sure you've submitted your name to one of our fine wait staff - there's a one hour limit and a three hour wait, no alterations, no substitutions, no refunds… Gul Dukat!” he exclaims, spotting him just as they come within spitting distance. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“Quark,” Dukat says, gazing up at him, levelly.

Quark clambers down from the table where he'd been grandstanding, somehow even more garish up close than he was from a distance. “Come to try out the new holosuites, have you? I don't blame you - hard to stay away. They're the talk of the station! Now,” he says, leaning in, “I’m prepared to offer you a discount--”

“A discount?” Dukat repeats. “I am the Prefect of this station.”

Quark pales. “Of course,” he says, “of course, it's complimentary! It's on the house. We're very busy, perhaps I could pencil you in...after normal business hours?”

“How about now?” Lukin growls.

“Quark,” Dukat says, with a patience he's clearly threatening to revoke. “As I recall, we discussed the terms of operation for this little project of yours, and they included a full evaluation of the moral content of your catalogue.”

“Oh,” Quark says, tremulously, “yes, well, I can’t imagine there's anything that you'd object to--”

“The creative capabilities of your imagination hold very little interest to me, Quark.” Dukat leans in, slowly. “I would hate for something like this to result in the termination of your contract.”

“What's the hold up?” someone shouts from the back of the group.

Quark smiles, shaky though it is. “We’ll be right with you!” he calls. Then he turns to Dukat, smile evaporating. “Let’s not get hasty. Listen: I can provide a full list of my catalogue to old ironsides over here by this time tomorrow.”

“You'll do it now,” Dukat says.

“Gul Dukat!” Quark protests.

“You'll do it _now_ ,” Dukat repeats. Lukin looks incredibly smug as he holds out his hand.

Quark blanches, but swipes his PADD off the table he was standing on and begins pulling data off onto a data rod. “It's not exactly finalised,” he tries to say.

“You're right,” Lukin says. “It's not.”

Quark pulls the data rod out of his PADD  and hands it over. Lukin wastes no time - he takes the rod, then holds his hand out expectantly. After a silence that goes on for a little too long, he looks over at Naprem. He holds his hand out a little more pointedly.

Naprem feels an unexpectedly deep jolt of dismay. She looks down at her PADD, then pulls it closer to her chest.

“Give it here,” Lukin says.

“It's mine,” she says, voice full of reproach.

Lukin scoffs and looks at Dukat. Dukat glances over at Naprem and nods a little.

“He'll return it,” he says, without any indication that he understands the gravity of what he’s asking.

Lukin holds his hand out again and with great, aching reluctance Naprem surrenders her PADD, slowly pulling it away from her chest and placing it in his hand. He snatches it as soon as she's put it in his palm, tearing it out of her fingers. He jabs the data rod into it and Naprem's forced to watch, unable to figure out what to do with her empty hands.

Lukin flicks through the list of titles, smirking to himself.

“Some pretty nasty stuff in here,” he says.

“Now, hold on,” Quark says, trying to interrupt. “Some of those names can be deceiving.”

“ _Romulan Love Slave V_ ,” Lukin reads.

“Okay, well, that one’s pretty much what it sounds like, but the rest are very wholesome!”

Lukin turns his head and gives Dukat a look.

“I could arrest him,” he says. “I’ve got everything I need.”

“Now, hold on!” Quark cries, and as all three Cardassians turn to look at him, he swallows, shrinking into the bombastic bouquet of his extravagant outfit. “There’s no need for that - I’m more than happy to moderate my stock, within limits--”

Lukin scoffs and tosses his head a little.

Quark’s beginning to sweat and squirm, as though the threat of censorship is far worse than the heat. “A complimentary program! How ‘bout it? What better way to prove that I’ve got a quality product, here? You can try it yourself!”

Dukat looks like there’s nothing he’d like less in the world than to try the holosuites out for himself. He lets Quark sweat and simper for a second, looking down his nose at him. But finally, he shifts, shrugging a little. “If you insist,” he says.

Grovelling bursts out of Quark’s mouth like a maligned champagne cork. “Wonderful! Oh, thank you, Gul Dukat,” he gushes, “you’re always _so_ reasonable - you’ll see! It’s really nothing but good fun. Good...clean fun.”

Dukat casts a sly look back at Naprem.

“Weren’t you saying you’d like to try the holosuites, Professor?”

Naprem can’t drum the slightest bit of enthusiasm out of her deadened heart. Panic and anguish have left her with no energy for social niceties. “No,” she says. “I just said I’d never been in one.”

Quark elbows her sharply in the ribs and hisses under his breath at her. “Try to look alive, would you? I can _not_ go back to Cardassian prison!”

Dukat squints at him, but none of the Cardassians can make out Quark’s whispering, and he breaks into an obsequious grin before any of them can ask. “Right this way!” he crows. “Right this way!” 

As soon as they’re through the doors of the bar, Naprem has to stop - it feels like she’s walked into a brick wall. It’s so hot she can’t breathe, heat billowing, warping the air. Even Lukin whistles, scritching slowly at his wound. Damar hums and begins to vent slowly through his mouth. The atmosphere is suffocating in it. People lined up for the holosuites are wrapped around the dabo tables and past the bar. The girls are struggling, wiping their brows surreptitiously as they fight to keep smiling and laughing. As they move through the crowd, one of them takes a clattering dive as she trips off her table. One of the waiters catches her, hauling her upright, but Naprem can see her vainly trying to wipe her cheeks dry.

“You need to be giving them water,” Naprem hisses at Quark.

“They’re on duty,” he hisses back.

“If you don't want them to _die_ on duty, you'll give them water.”

Quark grimaces and waves Lank over. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, as Lank helps the fallen dabo girl over to the bar. She's snapped one of the heels off her shoes. “You go in there and make sure _I_ don't die on duty.”

“What do you want _me_ to do?” Naprem snaps.

“Something!” Quark hisses. “Anything! Whatever he likes - make that face you make when you're trying not to be cute.”

“What?!”

“Tora,” Damar says. They've gotten too far out in front of her.

“No,” Quark says, critiquing her face. “Not that one - ech! I'm glad you didn't take me up on my offer, you couldn't act happy to see a man if you tried.”

They make their way down a hall at the back of the bar to find two door panels. Quark bangs on one of them with his fist. There's a muffled voice from inside, but Naprem can't make out what it says.

“Time’s up!” Quark yells. He waves over another Ferengi, who keys in an override. The door opens, and an angry pair of Cardassians emerge.

“We’d barely started!” one says.

“Time flies when you're having fun,” Quark says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Take a hike.”

“We were trying,” gripes the other. But they lose their fight when they lay eyes on Dukat. The pair slinks off with reproachful, irritated looks back at Quark.

The Ferengi at the switchboard begins keying in instructions. “Now,” Quark says, “you just head on in there and enjoy yourselves.”

Dukat and Damar share a look. “I'll wait here for you, sir,” Damar says.

“Speak for yourself,” Lukin says. “I want to see this filth firsthand.”

“That's the spirit!” Quark says, clearly misinterpreting. He ushers them in, and when ushering won't suffice - in Naprem's case - he resorts to a little push, knocking her over the threshold behind them.

The door slides closed, and Dukat and Lukin stride ahead of her, surveying the room. Naprem clutches her PADD to her chest, heart galloping along, uncomfortably light, sitting high. The room is octagonal, with a white pad in the center, framed by slightly raised matte panels. There are two large sentinels of lights and dials at either side of the room, the likes of which Naprem has never seen before. She looks around, trying to get her bearings.

Then, a matrix of light pulses along the walls. The room alights, and Naprem feels a blast of cold air against her back. She blinks, and the room disappears, the walls and ceiling vanishing in an instant, replaced by an impossible whirl of snow. She looks up, and the wide eye of a gas giant stares back at her, it's rings like a rainbow of blue.

They're standing in an open air courtyard, surrounded on all sides by gilded, crystalline archways. All around them, there are opaque crystal columns, strung with gauzy banners the color of a mountain sunset, where the colors are rich and the air is thin. The tile beneath them is ornate polished stone, as are the walls that fence them in, reflecting the whorls of snow that dust the air. Huge hoops of crystal hang overhead, bells and chimes dangling from them, tinkling in the breeze. It isn't nearly cold enough for snow, but for the first time in days - no, maybe for the first time in _months_ , it's pleasantly cool.

It isn't just the change of scenery that leaves her disoriented - the hum of machinery is replaced by the buzz of conversation. Naprem looks around to find the halls on either side of them occupied by clusters of women (or, at least, she assumes that's what they are) - leaning into one another, cooing and gossiping just out of earshot, watching them with an open eagerness, a hunger she can barely quantify very less name. They're uniformly blue, like the rings in the sky, and in state of uniform undress, clothed almost entirely in the same gauzy fabric as the banners and nothing else, cooing and giggling, waving to them and wiggling their fleshy antennae.

Lukin scoffs, looking around. “Well that's one way of getting past the Morality Code.”

The women laugh and twiddle their fingers, some beckoning.

Dukat looks around, exhaling short through his nose. “I don't suppose he'll let us out until we've thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.”

Lukin chuckles, as though they're enjoying a dirty in-joke. “You don't need to tell me twice.” He ambles on without them, strutting a little. The blue women coo and giggle, all reaching for him as he draws nearer, enveloping him in a wave, rushing forward to touch and caress him.

Naprem shares a look with Dukat and, haltingly, they head off on their own.

The halls are thick with women - crooning, calling, crying out for them as they pass, reaching to caress Dukat’s face and Naprem’s, moaning as though even laying eyes on them is ecstatic. They swan and moon, pressing their buxom breasts together, modeling their rears and their hips. They aren't so much women as approximations of their bodies - automatons with no notable personality, but plenty of notable physical assets.

The cold - the cool - doesn't linger. As they move through the swaths of women, Naprem feels the heat invading again, pushing in where it's unwelcome, caressing her as eagerly as the women. She swats several away from her, but without force - even if they _are_ illusions, she doesn't have the heart to hurt them, the only unfortunate side effect being that she's forced to put up with them.

Lukin gets lost in the crowd ahead of them. Naprem isn't sure where they're headed - she isn't sure where they are relative to where they started. She knows, somewhere, underneath the illusion, they're still in the same room, moving in the same dimensions. It's surreal - where is the floor? Where is the ceiling? She puts her hand out to keep a woman from reaching for her, expecting her hand to pass through the intruding flesh. But it doesn’t. The women feel as real and warm as if they were living. When they come near, Naprem can smell their perfume and taste her breath.

“Clever,” Dukat says. “Creating a holoprogram that _includes_ the room.”

“What?”

Dukat gestures vaguely to the bony protrusion on his forehead. “The room, Professor. We’d feel it regardless - the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Open environments would inevitably read as false to a Cardassian. But an enclosed space…” He hums, brushing off a woman as she plasters herself to him. “Very clever. I'm sure someone else is to blame for the idea.”

It's only as she's following him through the crowd, small, glittering bits of snow fluttering past her cheek, that she finally remembers she's supposed to be angry with him. She watches him brush off the affections of these fake women as easily as if they were Bajoran, and her fury suddenly reinstates itself, a steady, stubborn burn in her belly.

They make their way down the hall and into an atrium. Women shriek and swoon as they enter - the crowd of them is unending. They throw themselves at Dukat and Naprem both, and while Naprem pushes them away, Dukat simply chuckles. Several of them loop their arms around his waist, gyrating obscenely or crooning for attention.

“This is absurd,” Naprem says.

“I suppose it could be charming for those desperate enough to entertain the affections of holographic women. Excuse me, my dear,” he says, extricating himself from the arms of one woman only to be set upon by another.

Naprem feels her fury flare, scorching her heart. “I can't believe you're enjoying this.”

“Should I not be?” Dukat picks his way through the crowd, surveying the space. The atrium seems to be dominated by a bazaar of sorts, but the only goods on sale appear to be the bodies of the women who are eagerly plastering themselves to them both.

Naprem burns a little hotter. The unnaturally warm air does the ice laden space few favors, clashing poorly with the happy illusion Quark has conjured. “People on your station are dying,” she snaps.

“Professor,” Dukat groans. “Please. Not this again.”

“‘Not this again’?” Naprem repeats. “‘ _Not this again’?_ ”

The women release them, hands coming away in reluctant tendrils as they move towards the center of the room. Naprem wonders, vaguely, where Lukin has gotten off to. She supposes he must be thoroughly acquainting himself with the morality protocols of this particular program, assuming it has any.

Near the center of the room stands a fountain, where women are bathing and splashing one another. They laugh and shower one another with crystal beads of water, hiding their assets behind carefully positioned screens of water and soaked towels.

“Professor,” Dukat sighs. “I don't know what you want from me.”

Naprem flushes, cheeks hot, hands numb. She's getting so angry that it's making her sick. “I've been _very_ forthright with what I want from you.”

“ _Professor_ ,” Dukat says, exasperated as he turns to her. “I've made the climate controls a priority. I don't understand why you're so invested in this.”

“Don't understand wh--” Naprem fumbles the rest of the sentence, too full of outrage to string words together. She's vibrating with contempt for him. “You _vile--_ my people are _dying_! We’re knocking around a holosuite as my people suffer and die, and you want to act like I'm being unreasonable!”

Dukat's eyes narrow and she sees that bruise-like flush go through his ridges - he flushes wine-dark, then pale, headfeathers rising, ridges fanning out in a slow, serious threat. He pushes up on his digitigrade legs ever so slightly.

“Tora,” he says, voice grave. “Be _very_ careful how you choose to speak to me next.”

Naprem blanches - the sweat in the center of her palm goes from hot to cold, and for just a moment, the foundation of her rage goes dangerously sandy. The threat of Dukat's anger is a dire one. She swallows thickly, fighting back her fear. He inflates, predator blood darkening his skin, and for just a second she feels like prey, weak and given to supplication. For just a second, he truly intimidates her, and her heart pounds with fear not for her people, but for herself.

And then, they're interrupted again by the women in the fountain. Out of nowhere, the illusory gaggle splashes a great handful of crystal blue water across Naprem's face. She gasps and splutters, shielding herself - it might be fake, but it feels plenty real. She's soaked, dirty clothes clinging to her body, hair plastered to her face, mouth hanging open.

Dukat stares at her for a moment, and then laughter comes rumbling out of him. He throws his head back and laughs, one hand pressed to his chest, and all at once, Naprem isn't fearful or angry - she's embarrassed. Deeply, achingly embarrassed.

She pushes her hair back, looking down at her PADD. It's soaked. She tries to wipe the screen dry but her sleeve is soaking wet - she only succeeds in streaking more water across the screen. The cool air that first greeted them feels unpleasantly warm now, but wet as she is she's almost cold, shame a knife in her chest. She wants to shrink. She wants to disappear. Dukat's laughter booms around the atrium, and Naprem desperately wants to hide. She tucks her PADD under her arm and struggles to ring out her tunic. Her wet hair falls into her eyes and, blind, she squeezes water directly into her shoes. Dukat laughs louder, and her throat tightens, her cheeks hot.

Dukat laughs until he has to clear his throat. He waves one of the women over. “Fetch us a towel, won't you? Ah, ah,” he tuts, grinning as one of the women in the fountain tries to hand her his, hands folded coquettishly over her privates. “A _dry_ towel, please.” The legions of women summon one immediately and he takes it without a thank you.

He holds it out to Naprem with one of his lopsided smirks. “I think this may help,” he purrs, as though this is all part of a good time they're having.

Naprem looks at him, standing there, armor glistening in the ghostly blue and purple of this fake alien planet, ornamented and wreathed by scantily-clad alien women, and it dawns on her that there's nothing she wants less than to accept his help. There's nothing she wants less than to keep standing here and playing nice.

So she doesn't take the towel. In fact, she doesn't make any further attempts to dry herself at all. None of this is real, after all. Instead, she stands very still, and then she turns around and walks away from him, pushing her way through the crowd of fake people.

His legs are twice as long as hers, but it takes him a second to catch up with her, no doubt because he's gawking after her. She can hear it in his tone, disbelieving, shocked: “Professor!”

He follows after her, and she pushes harder through the crowd to stay ahead of him. The cool air has ebbed away, replaced by the unbearable heat of the outside, and it makes the lie of the snow falling in the courtyard all the more apparent. Sweat makes itself apparent on her forehead yet again, mingling with the fake water dripping down her chin.

“Professor,” Dukat says again, catching her by the arm. Without thinking, she rips it out of his grasp. He still manages to spin her around, and she's forced to face him. He looks disgruntled and confused, as though there's anything ambiguous about how she's acting.

“Don't touch me,” she tells him.

“ _Professor_ ,” he says, with the patronizing, pedantic tone he uses whenever he's trying to calm her down. “Please. I apologize if I embarrassed you.”

Somehow, him calling attention to it only makes it worse. Naprem's cheeks burn red.

“I forget how emotionally unstable your kind can be,” Dukat continues, as though he hasn't said more than enough already.

“Unstable?!” Naprem cries, immediately hating herself for proving his point and for repeating his heinous words for the fourth time in five minutes.

“I do try to give you a bit more credit,” he says. “You have a great deal more sense than the average Bajoran - but I suppose you can't help your biological defects any more than I can help mine.”

Naprem hisses back at him. “If by _biological defect_ you mean being born without tact or conscience, then yes, Dukat, you’re right - neither of us can help you!”

Dukat frowns, drawing his brow ridges together. “It was a little water, Professor - I don't have to be a monster to enjoy myself every once in a while.”

Naprem leans in to make sure he'll hear her, showing her blunt teeth. “In these circumstances, you do.”

“I fail to see how.”

“Oh, I know you do! That much is clear to me.”

Dukat narrows his eyes in a curious way, tilting his head - then, a realization dawns in his face.

“Is this _still_ about the climate controls…? Professor!” He all but throws his hands up, shaking his head. “I am _ordering you_ to make peace with that decision.”

Naprem almost chokes on her disgust with him. “You can't order me to _feel_ something, Dukat!”

“This is a _small_ problem,” Dukat insists.

“It's small to you!” Naprem shouts. “It's small to you, because it isn't _your people_ dying! Prophets,” she gasps, the admission burning even before she makes it. “I really thought you were different.”

Dukat's face tightens around the immensity of his distaste. “This barely registers as an inconvenience. It will be resolved in due time.”

“Due time for _you!_ For Kessa Nir it’s already too late! Dr. Tebua projected forty-five deaths by this time tomorrow - forty-five! How many by this time two days from now? How many by this time next week? How many of my people have to die before the solution is past due, _Prefect_?” She practically spits the word, like a bitter, slimy tar from the back of her mouth.

“I have addressed the problem,” Dukat says. “And I've heeded your advice.”

“You've only heeded as much of it as you care to heed, and only when it was already far too late - do you know,” she asks, “how much I keep from you? How many people approach me for help with all the little things you do to make our lives enduringly hellish? Do you know how often I keep my mouth shut and don't ask for things I _know_ people need?”

“If you've done that much,” Dukat says, words cutting, “then you do understand - there are choices to be made, in our position, about the delegation of resources. You don't share those things with me because on some level, you are sensible enough to realize that they constitute trivialities.”

“You think _death_ is trivial!” Naprem yells.

“In some cases,” Dukat says, his gaze intense. “Yes.”

Naprem stares at him, breath coming in uneven, hiccup-y jolts, heart beating so hard that she feels like it might lift her off the floor a little.

“You're worse than he is,” she whispers. “You're worse than Darhe’el.”

A profoundly offended look rolls over Dukat's face like the shadow of a thunderhead. He bristles, feathers fanning out slowly, hands curling to fists at his side.

Then, Naprem hears it: among the titters and the cooing of the women, a repetitive _scritch-scritch-scritch_ as Lukin claws at his wound. She looks back and finds him standing a few feet from them, a blue woman hanging off of him, scratching idly at the burn on his chest, staring. Despite the oppressive heat, her chest goes icy with dread.

“You're dismissed, Professor,” Dukat says, lowly.

She turns back to him, breath catching in her throat. His face is a mask, wiped clean of emotion, as unfamiliar and distant as a stranger’s. She opens her mouth to reply, but he cuts her off.

“You're _dismissed_.”

Naprem closes her mouth. She looks down. She doesn't know what to say - it doesn't seem like she should say anything at all.

The illusion dissolves around them, crowds of blue women dissolving to mist and taking their laughter with them. The snowy landscape evaporates, and the crystal archways disappear. The room looks much smaller without anything in it. Dukat and Lukin stand still, and Naprem, having no better ideas, puts her head down and makes for the door.

Quark’s waiting on the other side, looking painfully eager.

“So?” he says. “How was it?”

Naprem tries to find the words, but the heat invades her mouth and her cheeks and makes her ears ring. It melts her mind into an incongruous ball of wax. Damar’s standing beside the door, watching her. She ignores him and looks back over her shoulder at Dukat, but he isn't looking at her. She waits a second longer, but he doesn't turn his head.

“...ask the Prefect,” she says.

When she walks away this time, no one runs to stop her.


End file.
